jamisnemo

Hello everyone! I'm new

I just started working in a bike shop and today a customer came in with a downhill bike I had done a 1 year tune up on early this morning. His front rim was taco'd enough to not be able to spin in the fork.

Through the haze of liquor on his breath he went on about how we (I, since I had done the tune up on his bike) had done something to his bike to cause his wheel to bust. He said he was going down a trail he was used to, hit the front brake and watched the wheel taco right there as he was riding along.

I know that wheels can fail like this if they are hit hard enough or if the spoke tensions are too high but is it possible to taco a wheel without hitting it into anything?

Because he was clearly drinking and because we have kicked him out of the shop a number of times before I'm not so worried for my job but I would like to know if he's bull****ting us or if this kind of thing can actually happen.

Any input would ease my mind a lot.

Thanks!
jamis

GV27

Hitting a rock, log or other immovable object is the usual cause!

I guess you could've left the wheel loose and then it came out and bent against the frame/fork. Usually the lawyer tabs would've prevented that and just as likely/more likely he took the wheel off when transporting it.

Superlight carbon wheels can just fail, but no way a downhill wheel can - the rims on those things are practically self-supporting!

Tell his drunk ass to get lost - you don't need that sort of customer!

edit: oh, welcome!

jamisnemo

Thanks for the reply!

The wheel has a through axle though so there's no way it could have hit any other part of the bike. If the wheel had had too much tension on the spokes could it have taco'd under the stresses of braking?

thanks again!

GV27

Nah - broken a bunch of spokes and then tacoed it perhaps. But all else being equal a higher tensioned wheel will be stronger anyhow. And again, that downhill stuff is pretty strong. You would've really had to give it the gorilla treatment with the spoke wrench.

Relax. It's not your fault. His drunk butt hit something and he didn't even know it. Or he's full of crap. One or the other.

waterrockets 

Yeah, it's not a tune-up problem. Braking forces are significant, but it would still have to be in conjunction with a big hit, probably not straight-on.

El Julioso

Unless you removed a bunch of leading spokes on his wheel for some reason, I would say the braking force didn't taco the wheel. He probably jumped and landed sideways or just crashed into something (being drunk has an unfortunate tendency to cause such incidents).

I wouldn't worry about it. I get this kind of customer in the shop sometimes. They break something expensive and try to tell us that it's our fault that it broke, not them crashing the bike into something

I had a customer last month, for instance, accuse me of bending their handlebars in the shop. I would pay to see someone strong enough to bend handlebars Incredible Hulk-style. Even with the bench vice, bending handlebars is pretty difficult.

Capn ¡FUN!

hmm, I was drunk when my last taco happened. It was a during a game of tallbike polo, and a beautiful dreadlocked girl fell out of the heavens landing her rear end gracefully onto my front rack and creating a rather interesting potato chip shape out of my front wheel. After a few stomps I was back in the game. Totally off topic, I know.

AlucardZero

The Mexicans cause taco's...

GV27

LOL - should've taken it to your LBS and berated them!

GV27

C'mon dude - you don't know your own strength! You probably bent them installing the grips......